InnerSelf

by Tim Ray. "Until Death Do Us Part"... How much do these words have to do with the reality of life in the 21st century and with modern-day relationships? Let's compare the reality of women and men today with the time when this marriage vow arose...

by Daphne Rose Kingma. Ending a relationship is so painful and makes us feel so awful — bad, hopeless, inadequate, desperate, lost, lone­ly, and worthless — that most of us are afraid we won't live through it. We feel bad about what our families will think, we're afraid of what...

by Pamela Jo McQuade.

Your heart will always lead you to where you are meant to be. Now, there are times when it becomes difficult to listen – especially when your heart feels like a tomato that has just been pulverized in a food processor. A broken heart...

by Vecchi Talarico.

The list was one I never thought I would make. I stared at the book titles I had jotted down for reference; each of them looked at divorce from a different angle. I felt I was at the end of my rope as I drifted farther and farther away from any hope of restoring the unity we...

While listening to the radio today, I heard someone suggest that the best way to deal with divorce was to never have one! I suppose there is some truth to that; however, it's a bit unrealistic. In America, close to 50 percent...

Here's a stunner: 64 percent of all marriages that began in 1990 ended in divorce by the turn of the millennium. Look behind the runaway divorce rate and you'll see what strikes us as an even more disturbing statistic: 70 percent of those failed marriages produced at least one child. Wow! That means that more children than ever before are being born into soon-to-be-broken homes. Roughly half of all children born in this country over the past 15 years have ended up being children of divorce.

Quite often, I spend time with people who are extremely critical of themselves for having multiple failed relationships. The truth is, they're missing the point: We can't fail, because there's no way to do these things wrong. A failed relationship, if you put it into its proper context, is a chance to...

A third party has no power to break up a healthy relationship. No one can come between you and your partner unless something has already come between you. A mate having an affair is not the cause of a breakup; it is a symptom of a breakdown in the fabric of the primary relationship. An affair can be the most valuable wakeup call of a lifetime.

At what point do you say, "I'm leaving -- he's been beating me for years and it isn't going to stop"? When do you stop believing a lie? You stop when you learn the truth. And you learn the truth by no longer believing a lie. When we stop believing the lie that our abuser will change after years of hitting us, we are left with the truth. Why should he change? Is there a need? Hasn't he promised after every beating that it will never happen again?

A divorce, separation or, in general, any loss of an important relationship is a painful experience. We can, however, use this inner discomfort for our spiritual benefit. Although we need to make every possible step to heal our relationships, if and when a relationship breaks down, there is still much we can learn.

While hundreds of studies exist concerning the results of divorce and separation, less than a handful have been conducted concerning the prediction or likelihood of divorce for a couple. Thanks to John M. Gottman, Ph.D., who has pioneered predictive research, there are many marriage and family therapists who conduct a premarital test to assess a couples' likelihood of marital satisfaction. One study Gottman conducted involved videotaping couples as they came together to resolve an area of conflict in their marriage.

People will ask you: I didn't know you were having trouble. What went wrong? You go over the confrontation script again, refining your grievances, sharpening the battles. The main thing is to get this over with and get on with life. It's finished, you think. After all, more than a million couples get divorced every year. But you had forgotten about the bad ghosts that go dancing in the night.

Dear John, I have been seriously looking back upon our relationship and getting very clear on what I need and desire out of a relationship. The conclusion I have come to is that we are too different in both our personality and our desired lifestyles to be able to successfully live together with joy, bliss, good communication, and interaction.

Making the decision whether or not to leave a relationship may be the most daunting part of the divorcing process; at least it is the one filled with the most anxiety. Divorce is a choice made of our own free will, and we sense the enormity of this responsibility...

The issues you'll deal with in the early stages of divorce are generally on opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. Indeed, most people going through a marriage breakup enter therapy disoriented because they can't choose between wildly conflicting emotions.

The lonely withdrawal from married life is very real to men. They express loss in a million different ways. Some men are without solace, barely able to function, and say that "divorce is worse than death! The other extreme is evidenced by men who rage rather than mourn. They endure their pain by working longer hours, overindulging in alcohol, or by engaging in frenetic sex or death-defying sporting activities. To show strength, they hide their grief, even from themselves.